- If the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industries) promotes someone or something, it automatically pre-supposes the someone or something should be regarded with deep suspicion because in all probability, it puts the interests of consumers at risk.
The IFPI is owned by Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, the Big Four Organized Music cartel, all of whom are trying to blackmail and sue their customers into buying high-priced, low quality product. And the IFPI was one of the vested interest voices fulsomely celebrating yesterday's announcement that Sharman Networks had, after many years of effort, finally been able to form a liaison with the corporate entertainment industry.
The decision, dressed up as a 'victory' for the cartels, "pretty much ensures there will be next to no technological innovation coming from this country," emailed a p2pnet friend in Australia.
Our m8 also pointed out the IFPI is publicizing a paene written by long-time Sharman mucker Kevin Bermeister, ceo of Brilliant Digital Entertainment.
"Bet Kevin never thought he'd be published on the IFPI's site," said the email, which describes Bermeister's piece as "funny".
But "funny" it isn't.
Below is Kev's Kontribution to the Born Again Kazaa saga, in which p2pnet plays a small part via the Kazaa Kase. But before you get to that, here's a quote:
"At the deepest corners of the Internet are budding new technologies of the 'dark-net', a communication zone almost undetectable, but for the faintest of electronic fingerprints that often give away the underlying purpose of the communication. To detect these, and thwart the growing practices of digital pirates a new era of technical and business co-operation must emerge."
Ahhhh. Those "faintest of electronic fingerprints" .......
Prior to its religious conversion through which it enters the New-Age Path of Light, the path having already been defined by BitTorrent, Sharman's Kazaa was said to have been one of the technologies primarily responsible for facilitating the activities of the so-called "pirates".
In the unlikely event you haven't come across it before, Altnet is handling the lame duck TrueNames DRM application Sharman, Altnet and BDE have been trying so desperately to foist on the world, with a marked lack of success.
Their triumph with the Big Four record labels and Big Six movie studios will, of course, change all that.
Since the heady days of Napster and Kazaa content industries have financed the development of counter surveillance and interdiction technologies to thwart user infringements. However, technology morphs thanks to a myriad of cunning engineers wishing their inventions to stay ahead of the technical and legal curve. Meanwhile, legal solutions, undertaking their own metamorphosis, are trying to keep up with the pace. Lobbyists and supporters of copyright step up daily to draw attention to the value of intellectual property in the global economic equation.
In the digital world many silent beneficiaries of piracy continue to build their respective businesses. These surreptitious benefactors include computer manufacturers, CDROM manufacturers and resellers, portable playback device manufacturers, software developers, Internet service providers and Telco’s amongst others. Each of these industry groups benefit by the demand of users who surge forward to claim their pirated content with an almost glutinous zeal.
Now that users and industries have tasted this benefit there is no turning back. Only a smarter more agile content industry will restore its heralded position where content is king and technology, representing the digital distribution channel, takes a bow to its master. However, content seen in the broader perspective as ‘knowledge’ where knowledge is ‘power’, has much to endure in order to preserve its rightful place. There is a lot of fight on the “information wants to be free” playing field where piracy brushes up against terrorism and child pornography. At the deepest corners of the Internet are budding new technologies of the “dark-net”, a communication zone almost undetectable, but for the faintest of electronic fingerprints that often give away the underlying purpose of the communication. To detect these, and thwart the growing practices of digital pirates a new era of technical and business co-operation must emerge.
It is widely recognized that faster bandwidth is a key to the expansion of national economies. Improved communication, education, knowledge transfer and exchange yields massive productivity improvement, thus governments are pushing for this to occur, but more bandwidth also means more piracy including piracy of larger files, movies, TV shows, video games, software applications and super fidelity audio. Faster bandwidth also threatens existing traditional distribution channels currently favored by copyright industries. Therefore, the inevitable political and business conflict is clear.
Resolving this dilemma requires the industries who are silent beneficiaries of online piracy to change their tune. The Chinese government monitors and filters all Internet communication where locking down the web is unchallenged. However, in The USA, Europe and other democracies, it will take co-operation and significant deal making to enable the technologies that bring piracy under control without sacrificing the very privacy and freedom of speech principles on which these democracies are founded.
Those that control the entry points to the Internet and the builders of its freeways will become increasingly important in resolving piracy. The technical solutions remain relatively straight-forward, but their successful implementation could become bogged down in the political, legal and business quagmire that typically ensues in the tussle between content and distribution. Where senior executives do not build a clear understanding of a preferred ‘out of the box’ strategy and management remain fearful of competition, the optimal path to its successful implementation is likely to freeze in the face of opposition.
Altnet, as a proponent of the ‘out of the box’ strategy, has developed solutions to forge cross industry co-operation to holistically tackle piracy. A cornerstone of this strategy is the use of Altnet’s patented Truenames technology, which based on known algorithmic file identification standards (file hash), is the lowest common denominator for optimal indexing and distribution of files on the Internet. With Truenames it is possible for all file transfers can be successfully governed whilst retaining the privacy rights of individual users. Altnet foresees two phases of its business development; a) to build into existing P2P applications the Truenames identification technology that will permit file hashes of infringing files to be filtered from user actions at an application level and b) to build into ISP routers the same Truenames technology to filter infringements. Unlike other filtering methods, the Truenames infringing file database at www.globalfileregistry.com contains the Truename or unique file hash identifier for each infringing file known to Altnet in active circulation on the Internet.
Working with anti-piracy vendors and law enforcement authorities to aggregate unique infringing file identifiers, Altnet expects the volume of files represented at its Global File Registry to grow rapidly. Using fast, memory resident, look up tables it will rapidly index the unique identifiers of infringing files so that the indices can be put to effective use through P2P applications and router type technologies, at critical locations of the Internet, in order to detect and reduce infringements of criminal and civil laws.
Opposition is expected especially when the primary beneficiaries of piracy will be asked to relinquish their benefit to participate in a potentially less lucrative model. However, the implementation of a technical and business model founded on a widely patented platform in which partners in this global anti-piracy effort are able to profit securely, legitimately and fairly will lessen opposition considerably. Capital investment for technologies in the distribution chain will ultimately enable participation in content centric revenue streams. Increased sales from licensed content and its derivative revenue streams emerging from this fully legitimized distribution channel will provide the incentives for parties to effectively participate toward a common end.
There has never been a better time to lock down the players, lock down the points of presence and implement accurate technologies that sniff out infringing files and replace them with non-infringing files without invading privacy of users or their data. The technologies that will allow these results to be achieved are now available and the companies that own them poised to implement them, the objective is within grasp. With the co-operation of major content owners, the final emergence of a fully legitimized Internet distribution channel could enable the completion of convergence where security in copyright through technology heralds in a new era of growth.
